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Editorial: On 25th anniversary of people's movement, no lamp of liberty shines in Tiananmen Square

TIANANMEN SQUARE

A Chinese man stands in front of a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Cangan Blvd., in Tiananmen Square in this June 5, 1989, file photo. The man was pulled away by bystanders and the tanks continued on their way. (AP Photo/FILE/Jeff Widener)
(JEFF WIDENER)

At the end of May in that seemingly magical year, a plaster and styrofoam model of the Statue of Liberty was erected across from the gigantic portrait of Chairman Mao. The portrait, of course, represented the old ways, the repression, the regimentation, the doctrinaire; the statue was emblematic of the people's highest hopes, their dreams, their aspirations.

The statue, of course, is only a memory; the portrait of Mao still keeps a watchful eye over the square.

No one knows how many were killed when the Chinese government moved to crush its own citizens on June 4, 1989. When the authorities control the media, what is passed off as news is actually just more public relations, more propaganda.

What happened in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989, of course, would not be repeated in the nations of Eastern Europe later that year. Just five months after the Chinese military crushed the people's movement, citizens climbed atop the Berlin Wall to dance and celebrate the end of the old, repressive ways.

Two centuries prior, the smart money would have been on the British Empire in its battle with a ragtag assemblage of Colonists on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean.